Of Galas and Sugar Cookies
by fiatlux3721
Summary: Modern AU -- Pelleas is wandering on the streets at night in the dead of winter, when he meets the beautiful and charitable Micaiah. Suddenly, his life is changed forever. Please read and review!


Pelleas wandered around the streets of Daein, the financial district, to be precise. Winter was in full swing; biting winds and slurries of snow blew through alleys. In his t-shirt, he was about to freeze to death. _What a great time to turn eighteen and get kicked out of the orphanage_, he thought angrily to himself. Stopping to catch his breath on a corner, he assessed himself. What was the point in trying to keep warm tonight? He was a homeless kid, not of any real worth; what was the point in _not _freezing to death? There was nowhere for shelter, nowhere to hide from the omnipresent cold.

Suddenly, he saw his one chance. He had been walking around the financial districts; the buildings were tall, grave, marble monoliths, like giant animals or gods hunkered down for an age-long sleep. But amidst their severe grey walls, there was an opening. A back door, perhaps carelessly left open, golden light spilling from it, calling him closer. As he hurried near, he heard the sound of happy chatter, faint music…he smelled food, and sweet, faintly chemical scents that were almost appealing… He threw caution to the wind and slipped through the door.

With growing horror, he surveyed the building he had entered. It was a grand ballroom, and a gala was in full swing. Dozens of couples were dancing, eating, talking, laughing, and having a good time. The men were in severe black tuxedos, the women in the most beautiful of silk dresses. It was obviously a ball for the very rich. No one had seemed to notice him yet; he had no idea what course to take now. He, a homeless kid, could not exactly gate-crash a socialite bash. He inched closer to the door; the freezing air outside reached for him, goosebumps rising along his arms. Suddenly, a woman pointed at him.

"Look! Who's _that_?!"

The hall immediately fell to a horrified, hushed chatter. Pelleas instantly regretted his actions. _What's another night on the streets, you idiot?_ he taunted himself, watching the blue-bloods react to his presence. Of all the buildings in the financial district, he'd had to pick this one. What did they, gleaming and resplendent in impeccable designer tuxedos and the finest silk evening dresses, think of him, in a tattered t-shirt and ancient jeans salvaged from the dumpster of a thrift store?

Pelleas' knees nearly buckled when a woman stepped out of the crowd and flew towards him. To a normal person's eye, she was quite beautiful; to the homeless Pelleas, she could have been the goddess herself. She was swathed in a glittering silver gown that perfectly matched her hair. She was a vision of beauty, and he felt like an insect beneath her enchanting golden gaze.

"Are you all right? What's your name?" Her voice was lovely. What could he say to her?

"M—my name is P—Pelleas, ma'am," he said hoarsely, surprised by how haggard even his voice sounded after a month on the streets. "I'm sorry—terribly sorry I came in—it's so cold—I'll be going—"

"No." He turned to leave, wishing it was possible to die of embarrassment, rather than just suffer painfully from it. She grabbed his shoulder with a hand, the ballroom remaining dead silent. "Wait. Are you all right?" Her face a mask of sympathy and sweetness, she pulled off her wrap and draped it around his shoulders. It was fur, real fur, Pelleas noted. It was the softest thing he'd ever touched, and the warmest he'd ever been. He needed to leave now even more, but he couldn't decide which was worse: staying and accepting the warmth, kindness, and abject embarrassment, or leaving and freezing to death in a cardboard box on the streets of Melior. He stared at her mutely, dumbly, like a guilty child.

"You can stay with me tonight, dear," she said kindly, evenly, as though it were not a wild, inexplicable gesture of kindness, but a fact. He was taken aback. This goddess of beauty had let him in, offered him her fur shawl, and was now taking him in off the streets?

"Ma'am, that's too—I can't—"

"I insist. There's a guest room in my apartment." The room was still agonizingly silent, save for a green-haired man fighting his way through the crowd. He was headed for Pelleas' rescuer, and quite angry.

"Micaiah, you can't—he's from off the streets!" So his angel had a name: Micaiah. It was beautiful; flowing; it suited her perfectly and fit into the puzzle of her loveliness, making her a little more complete and wonderful. Pelleas wanted to vanish into the floor and die as she turned to the other man, a frown crossing her face.

"Sothe!" she snapped. She pushed him away from her, standing her ground and seeming to defend me. "He has a good heart! And it's not like you'll be inconvenienced by him, you'll just be—" She suddenly quieted and looked away; it had seemed like he was on the verge of slapping her.

"Come, Pelleas, we're leaving." Not giving him any say in the matter, she grabbed his forearm and dragged him out the door, away from the relentless stare of the crowds. She pulled him down several city blocks. The night was freezing, but he was so dazed that he forgot to offer her back her shawl. Her elegant dress couldn't have been warm.

As soon as they left, a confused, subdued chatter began. Sothe stood in the doorway, looking equally angry and defeated. Ike turned to Soren and Titania, laughing uneasily.

"Pretty weird, huh?" Soren was then struck by a blinding bolt of realization. _Pelleas..._ he thought. _I remember him_... They'd grown up together in the orphanage, and then had never seen each other again as soon as Soren had begun to be passed around to myriad abusive homes. Soren stared into space, subconsciously taking a step closer to Ike, the canned memories of those dark years threatening to burst free.

At last they reached Micaiah's car, a sleek silver sedan. She ushered Pelleas into the passenger's seat. He was still too shocked to speak, worried that if he breathed too loud, he'd wake up from the dream and be back in a cardboard box. She drove quickly, weaving the car through the frozen nighttime streets of Melior. Pelleas alternated between staring out the window at the glamorous district of the city, and trying to catch glimpses of Micaiah without her noticing. Needless to say, the woman held his interest far longer than the city. It was awkward for a while; he could feel her rage at the green-haired man's outburst. He wished he could say something, but didn't trust his incoherence to deliver anything that wasn't completely stupid. Finally, she spoke.

"I'm sorry about Sothe," she sighed, toying absently with the radio. Pelleas started at the sound of her voice.

"Ma'am—what—it's fine—" She turned to him, fixating him in a golden stare.

"Please, Pelleas, call me Micaiah. Sothe is my brother, but he's...overprotective."

"Oh."

"I can tell about you—you're a good person. You have a good heart. I—I just _know_," she said quietly. "Sothe doesn't believe me." Pelleas looked away. Was he a good person? He'd never really thought about it—thought about who he was in general. For most of his life, he'd been concerned with survival, not being broken in the reaches of the orphanage.

"...am I?" he said. Micaiah smiled slightly.

"Yes. I don't normally take gate-crashers home, you know." She laughed at her own joke, but Pelleas blushed and bit his lip, still embarrassed over his actions.

"I'm just kidding, Pelleas. So, tell me about yourself." He cleared his throat, trying to think of a way to summarize his life that wouldn't send her running away screaming.

"I—I turned eighteen..."

"Mmhmm."

"And they kicked me out of the orphanage..." Her expression turned to shock.

"Orphanage—Pelleas, I'm so sorry! I—"

"I never knew my parents," he said quickly. "I—I was a doorstep baby, as they called them..." She frowned, turning the car up a winding road into a neighborhood of fancy estates. "But, I have no friends, no family, no money, no nothing... So I ended up on the streets." He crossed his arms over his chest, tightening himself inside. Micaiah put a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm so sorry, Pelleas," she said sadly. "You can stay with me for a while. You can straighten things out. I can help you." He let out a shuddering breath, realizing how horrible he must smell. _At least in the orphanage they had showers_, he thought, touching a hand to his matted hair.

"Th—thank you," he said hoarsely. "Micaiah... No one's ever been so kind to me before." Micaiah nodded happily, pulling into the driveway of a near-mansion at the top of a hill. Pelleas handed her back the shawl as she led him into the house.

It was absolute luxury. The pristine white carpet was like walking on the clouds of heaven. It smelled nice, like baking and cleanliness. There was framed art on the walls. Pelleas stood in the entryway, staring at the massive chandelier sparkling in the ceiling as Micaiah hung her coat in the closet. He jumped when she came up behind him, lightly touching his elbow to jolt him out of his trance.

"Are you going to walk around, or stand there staring at the entryway?" she laughed. "Come on, you can sleep in the guest bedroom and take a shower. You can wear some of Sothe's things. I'll get pajamas for you while you shower. Don't worry; take as long as you want." _Pinch me_, Pelleas thought. It was like in an old movie, a random act of grace that happened to one lucky fellow. He'd only read about such splendor, never even seen a picture. He was in the farthest place imaginable from a cardboard box. Micaiah's radiant smile could have illuminated the house.

"Come on, you don't need me to help you. It's up the stairs, third door on the right in the left hallway. I'll get something for us to eat. Take as long as you like." Pelleas would have stood there forever, had she not flounced off to the kitchen in a rush of silver.

As he climbed the stairs and entered the bathroom, he felt as though he weren't really there; as though he had died, gone to heaven, and was watching someone else's life play out from above. The shower in itself could have been healing for the eighteen years he'd spent in the cold, moldy, damp hell of the orphanage; the water was boiling hot, there was every kind of soap known to man, and the showerhead had good water pressure. He climbed out and stared at himself in the foggy mirror. He felt like a demigod at the moment; he would have gladly laid down his life for Micaiah, and then some. He ran a comb through his silky purple hair. _How long has it been since I've seen a hairbrush?_

Pelleas tiptoed into the adjoining guest bedroom where he would sleep that night, noting that he'd taken a ridiculously long shower, and hoped that Micaiah wouldn't worry. He found a pair of flamboyant rose-pink silken pajamas folded neatly on the bed. He put them on, not even noticing the color. They were a little big, but they were warm, silk, and felt like the garments of the gods, a far cry from his tattered shirt and jeans. The room itself was at least a master bedroom by any normal person's standards, or perhaps a hotel suite. He remembered Micaiah's promise, and quietly went back downstairs.

Micaiah was in the kitchen, humming to herself and baking. She had changed into casual pajamas, wiped off her makeup, and pulled her hair back in a simple ponytail, yet she was still beautiful. The inviting, marble-faced kitchen was warm and filled with the smell of baking. The air alone was the most delicious thing Pelleas had ever tasted. She appeared not to notice him as she cut out a batch of sugar cookies with a floured glass, lost in her work.

"H—hey," he choked, going to sit on a stool. She looked up, initially surprised, then smiling sweetly.

"Hey," she replied, putting the pan in the oven and taking another out. "You look much better now. How was your shower?"

"G—great. B—best I've ever had." _Goddessdamn it, that was a weird, creepy comment! _he chastened himself. She appeared not to notice, laughing that beautiful laugh of hers and scraping cookies off the pan onto a cooling rack. They were snickerdoodles, Pelleas noted. Once, at Christmas, he'd had one. It had been like taking a bite of heaven.

"Oh my. And sorry about the pajamas," she said apologetically. "They're my brother's. He...he likes pink..." Pelleas honestly couldn't have cared less. Micaiah went over and grabbed a cooling bag of popcorn from the microwave.

"Here, take that plate of cookies," she said, exiting the kitchen. "We're going to watch a movie!" Pelleas would have crawled halfway around the world for her, let alone carry a plate of cookies. He followed her, wondering what "movie time" entailed. He'd never really seen a movie, just a few here and there beneath the orphanage owner's nose (and they usually were somewhat scarring to him, having been smuggled in by the older boys).

Her living room was like a theater only without the noisy children and spilled popcorn. A huge, sleek TV hung over the roaring fireplace, and inviting furniture abounded, draped with blankets and pillows. She plopped down on a giant leather couch front and center to the TV and patted the space next to her. Pelleas was taken aback, but obediently sat down beside her. She pulled out a huge remote and began working her way to a movie.

"Have some popcorn and cookies!" she chirped. "Whenever Sothe's gone, I have a bit of a night to myself. Tonight I have someone to share it with!" She smiled sweetly at him as the opening credits to a chick flick began to roll. Pelleas gingerly took a snickerdoodle. It was warm and soft and flaky and absolutely the best thing he'd had in his life. Micaiah grabbed a throw blanket and wrapped it around them. They were, Pelleas noted, _almost touching _beneath the blanket, and Micaiah seemed to be thoroughly oblivious to this, blithely watching the movie and eating popcorn as though they were the most important things in the world.

Pelleas had ceased to care about the movie; once Micaiah slipped into its trance, he was free to examine her delicate beauty without her noticing. The bitter, heartbreaking exhaustion of the past few months caught up to him, all in that moment on the couch, and he fell asleep looking at her, the makings of a smile on his face for the first time in years.

She didn't notice until the dead weight of his head landed on her shoulder—completely by accident—and a small snore emanated from his sleeping figure. She smiled to herself and let him stay there for the duration of the movie. When he awoke (horrified, of course), she denied it and said he'd only just fallen asleep. She half-marched, half-carried him up to bed and tucked him in, softly kissing his cheek as she turned out the light.

For the first time in eighteen years, he had sweet dreams.


End file.
